If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheLook at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIt is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe